BE Board:Curriculum chat

Purpose

The goal of the curriculum chat is to offer an avenue for interested BE graduate students to gain experience in the development of BE curriculum. This seems like a particularly good time for this activity since the BE department is rolling out a brand new undergraduate major.

Format/Topics

There are a number of possible ways to organize these meetings, some ideas:

1. One course
   • Covering only one course will allow a more in depth examination of the actual course content, as well as having time to cover general curriculum development advice from the professor(s) for the course. Also,
2. Multiple (related) courses
   • Examining multiple courses will leave less time for examing course content deeply, however it would enable time to be spend examining the relationships between the courses. Additionally, by having several courses more examples of general approaches to currilum design (from severaly different faculty) would be available. Especially important since it seems there is a good bit of variability in the techniques for course development.
   • Linda suggested perhaps grouping by year. i.e. have a presentation on the UG courses from sophomore year to see how they relate / can be made to work together better.

1. Curric

established/new courses

I think it would be great to continue curriculum chats in the future even after the curriculum has become more firmly established, couple reasons:

1. An established course may have a new faculty member teaching it and curriculum chat could be a forum to present changes/new approaches to the course.
2. It could help to keep courses fresh, presenting on a course that hasn't changed in 10 years will probably lead to changes/updates.

• • Possible formats for seminars:
  1. BE profs to talk about new courses
     • i.e. if a course is being taught for the first time might be interesting to see what the content will be and how it will integrate into the 'big picture' of the overall BE curriculum. (This might even improve enrollment, could encourage undergrads to come by to learn more about courses)
     • Might also be cool to do this for established courses every few years, just to make sure the curriculum is not getting stale.

• 1. Professors who study education directly to present on techniques, what other institutions do, etc.
  • Is there enough interest in stuff like this?

• 1. • Based on the first UG Curriculum Meeting, it seems like some of the professors at least would enjoy talking about new courses they had developed. So that's great news. Now question is does anyone want to hear it? :) Would like to add/edit a couple questions on the BE survey to get a better guage on the interest level for this.
       • Based on survey responses it looks like there is demand for this activity.